can’t believe you’re serious,” she said as soon as her father answered. “I can’t believe you’d threaten me with such a thing. I’ve never lived in Baraka. I haven’t visited in seven years—”
“Yet you are Barakan whether you admit it or not. And I’ve been patient with you. I’ve allowed you to conclude your studies in the States, but you’ve finished your coursework, it’s time you came home.”
“Baraka isn’t my home!” She quickly shifted down the gears, coming to a stop as the heavy traffic ground to a standstill turning the four-lane highway into a sea of red brake lights.
“You were born in Atiq. You spent your childhood here.”
“Until I was four.” And yes, she might have been born in the coastal city of Atiq, the sprawling capital of Baraka, where the buildings were all whitewashed, and the streets narrow and winding, but she was English, not Barakan. And her memories of Baraka were the memories of a visitor, a guest, memories generated from her annual visit to her father’s home.
Growing up, Keira had dreaded the trip to her father’s each summer. The annual visit became increasingly fraught with tension as she went from childhood to adolescence. Every year meant fewer freedoms, less opportunity to socialize, to be herself. Instead her father was determined to mold her into the perfect Barakan woman—beautiful, skilled, silent.
“I will never return,” she said now, speaking slowly in English, and then switching to Arabic for her father’s benefit. “I would rather die than return.”
For a long moment her father said nothing and then his voice came across the phone, his voice hard and cold like the thick sheets of ice that covered the lakes in the North. “Be careful what you wish for.” And he hung up.
Again.
Omar al-Issidri would not be happy to know how his daughter spent her free time.
Sheikh Kalen Nuri watched the queue of beautiful young women rush through the dark stadium tunnel out onto the sunny field for the half-time show.
Music blared from stadium loud speakers and Kalen Nuri watched the beautiful girls, all sleek arms and legs, skin enticingly revealed, tight tops that jutted perfect breasts, tiny white short shorts, knee high white boots, dance in formation. High kicks. Thrusting hips. Shoulders shifting, breasts jiggling.
Kalen’s gaze swept the rows of young women, bypassing the many honey-blondes for the brunette in the back row, her seductively long hair the color of obsidian and reaching the small of her back. Keira al-Issidri. Omar’s daughter.
Kalen’s lips compressed. Keira al-Issidri must have a death wish. Omar had been livid when his only daughter left the United Kingdom four years ago to study in the States. England was bad. America far worse.
What would Omar do if he knew his daughter was shaking more than just her blue, white and silver pom poms before sixty thousand people?
Keira al-Issidri was in serious trouble. In more ways than one.
It might be late September, Keira thought out on the playing field, but it felt like the hottest day of summer.
In the middle of the grass, beneath the blinding hot Texas sun, Keira’s head spun as she kicked and twirled and shimmied, her short shorts riding high on her thighs, her white boots clinging to her calves as she kicked her leg up over her head.
She was going to be ill.
But it wasn’t the hot sun making Keira her sick. It was the realization that she didn’t know her father, she’d never known her father, and that if her father was determined to do as he’d vowed, there was nowhere she could go to hide from him, no way to escape.
Her father had too much money. Too many connections. Her father, the Sultan’s right-hand man, had all of Baraka’s resources at his disposal. If he wanted her home. He’d get her home.
Chest tightening, air bottled inside her lungs, Keira tried to force herself to concentrate on the dance routine but she couldn’t escape her father’s voice, or the memory of his threat, and as the sun beat onto her skull like a hammer on a drum, she felt a strange disconnection with the rest of her body. Her legs were lifting, kicking, her arms moving, her body spinning, bending.
Lifting her face to the sun, Keira let the hot golden rays cover her and tried to block the sickening knowledge that pounded in her brain.
Things were about to get ugly.
Very, very ugly.
Hours after the game ended Keira leaned on the railing of a penthouse balcony holding a glass of wine she wasn’t drinking.
She hadn’t wanted to come to the party tonight, hadn’t been in the mood to socialize with a bunch of people she didn’t know, but one of the owners of the team had invited her, told her he had an important guest in town, and he hoped Keira would attend the party he was giving for his guest.
The team owner—who was also the man who wrote her paychecks—rarely asked anything of her and Keira reluctantly showered, dressed and headed to the party.
Now she stood on the balcony, which was blessedly dark, fixed her gaze on the lights of downtown Dallas, and tried to relax. But her father’s threat usurped every other thought. He’d vowed to drag her home. Vowed to force her into this marriage.
What was she going to do? Where could she go? For that matter, who could she go to?
Her father had served the Sultan of Baraka for fourteen years—nearly all of the Sultan’s reign. Her father had power, connections, wealth. He inspired fear in those who crossed him.
Who would help her, knowing her father was Omar al-Issidri? Who would take such a risk with his or her life?
She frowned faintly, rubbed at her temple. It hurt to think. It’d been such an ungodly long day and now she was here, trapped on the balcony, assaulted by the rock music pulsing from speakers inside the apartment and the raucous laughter of rich men seducing beautiful women.
She shouldn’t have come. The music was too hard, too loud. The people too different. The night too hot and humid.
She was tired. Overwhelmed. Panic set in. This was not a good place to be, not safe for her, not safe in any way. Clutching her wineglass, she drew a deep breath, and then another. Calm, think calm. Nothing bad is going to happen. Everything’s fine.
It had been years and she still hated parties. All these years and the heat, the noise, the liquor-fueled gaiety of parties still unnerved her. You could run from the past, she thought wearily, but the past eventually caught up.
“Don’t jump.” A male voice, cool and mocking, spoke behind her. His accent was different—British, cultured, and yet exotic.
Keira felt the strangest prickle at the back of her neck, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ve no intention of jumping,” she answered equally coolly, lifting her wineglass and taking a sip while keeping her gaze fixed on the skyline.
“Even though you’re hopelessly trapped?”
She beat back the flicker of alarm. Ignored the silver slide of adrenaline. “A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”
“Not
